Transport Tycoon Original
Marie Ota
Transport Tycoon is a city-based pixel video game designed and programmed by Chris Sawyer, and published by MicroProse on 15 November 1994[1] for DOS. It is a business simulation game, presented in an isometric view in 2D with graphics by Simon Foster, in which the player acts as an entrepreneur in control of a transport company, and can compete against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea and air.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe is an expanded and improved version of the original game, released in 1995. A version for Android and iOS was released on 3 October 2013 based on the sequel, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion.[2] A fan-made game engine recreation OpenTTD is also available.[3]
The game begins in 1930, and ends in 2030. The player starts out by borrowing money to finance construction of transport facilities, and is charged interest until the loan is repaid. As the user plays the game and earns revenues, they have the choice of expanding service along existing routes, or expanding their transportation network. The game features a progression of technology: in any particular year of the game generally only contemporary types of technology are available. For example, railroad signals which allow more than one train to use a section of track are initially semaphores. Later, they are replaced by red and green traffic-light signals. Similarly, in the beginning there are only steam engines, but later diesel and electric engines are introduced. In the game year 1999, monorails become available. These require a separate track system from railroads. If the player remains in business until 2030, the game announces that they have won, allows them to post their name on the "hall of fame" and then continues. At this point, the year stays 2030 and never goes any higher, although the game can continue indefinitely. Playing the entire 100-year campaign takes about 40 hours. The game allows the player to save at any time, and multiple saves of a particular game at any point are possible.
Vehicles in the game must be constructed at corresponding depots, which must be connected to the road or rail networks. Towns and cities have their own road networks, but extra roads may be needed to connect them to other towns, or to various resources.
The player earns revenue by picking up resources or passengers at a certain station, and delivering them to another station where there is a demand for them. Demand is determined by the area which surrounds the station; for example stations close to towns will demand passengers. The revenues will depend on the delivery time, distance, and quantity delivered. The influence of these factors on revenue varies according to the type of goods being delivered. For example, mail will rapidly fall in value, meaning that it can only be delivered profitably over short distances, or over long distances very fast. On the other hand, coal loses value very slowly, so it can be transported in bulk over long distances whilst remaining profitable.
At times, subsidies are offered to the first company to move a particular resource from one place to another. This encourages the player to create a larger more complex transport network, rather than focusing on previously profitable routes.
The game features a system of Local Authority. Each city has a rating for every transport company based on the impact of their transport network. When the rating falls too low, the player will no longer be able to demolish buildings or construct new stations. The rating depends on, among others, the level of service and the deforestation caused by the company.
In the course of a game cities develop and expand according to various economic factors, and new industries (demand) or other resource sites (supply) may appear. Some natural resources may also eventually be exhausted and industries without adequate transport service may shut down. Also, new models of vehicles are introduced and eventually come to replace older models. At introduction such a new model will likely have improved characteristics, but may suffer from reliability issues.
A reviewer for Next Generation gave the DOS version four out of five stars, commenting, "The best economic sim since Civilization, Microprose's new Transport Tycoon has all the features of Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon mixed with the look and ease of Maxis' SimCity 2000 and a host of new features ... that give the game a feel that is all its own." He further lauded the game for its graphics, "pleasant" music, sound effects, addictive play, and realistic simulation of the growth of cities and towns.[7]
A "World Editor" expansion pack was also released for the original Transport Tycoon, but was overshadowed by the Deluxe version released shortly afterward. It featured an alternative, Martian set of graphics, which did not appear in TTD.
After the success of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Chris Sawyer turned his attention towards a sequel, but during development he changed his mind and produced RollerCoaster Tycoon, which turned out to be a runaway hit. After RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was done, work on the third version was left to another development team, and Sawyer returned to work on a Transport Tycoon sequel, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion. It was released in September 2004 and was described by Sawyer as the "spiritual successor to Transport Tycoon".
It received poor reviews and was deemed a commercial failure on release, but sales through the digital releases are unknown. Regardless, there is an active Locomotion community that continues to produce modifications.
On 15 July 2013, Sawyer's 31X Ltd and Origin8 Technologies announced that they were working on a mobile version of Transport Tycoon. Sawyer was originally focusing on funding for the game, but ended up overseeing the design and helped with the debugging.[11] The game was released for iOS and Android on 3 October 2013.[12] The game is single player and is primarily based on Chris Sawyer's Locomotion.[13]
OpenTTD is an open source complete recreation of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, achieved by reverse engineering the original game.[3][14] It delivers many bug fixes and general enhancements to the game, like making it possible to run TTD on multiple platforms, including Mac, Linux, PSP, and Android. While both games allow new graphic sets for vehicles and terrain to be used, at present, TTDPatch still requires the original TTD graphics, sounds, binary and music files to run. While OpenTTD can still use the original TTD graphics and sounds, it does not need any of the TTD files to run as it has free graphics and sounds.[3]
You seemed to earn your stripes with a lot of MS-DOS and Amiga conversions of classic titles. How do you reflect back on this stage of your career and which early conversion game did you most enjoy working on?
Transport Tycoon is rightly regarded as one of the most important simulation games ever made. What was your early inspiration in making this classic title and how did you first approach MicroProse with your idea?
I must have spent countless hours designing intricate tracks and transport links on the amazing Transport Tycoon. Why do you think your classic title proved so popular and has had such a lasting legacy in gaming history?
Glad you mentioned it, the Deluxe version expanded on a number of elements from the original game. If you could go back in time are there any other options or expansions you would have liked to include in this new version?
You famously started work on a Transport Tycoon sequel soon after the release of the deluxe version. How far was the original sequel in development and why did you eventually stop work and move on to RollerCoaster Tycoon?
The game is another masterpiece and adds a lot more depth to the popular (and still great) Theme Park. Were you always a huge fan of theme parks and rollercoasters and what was your big inspiration and objectives for this title?
Theme Park famously had a lot of little hidden touches and Easter eggs such as adding extra salt on the chips. Can you reveal some of your personal favourite Easter eggs or nice touches you added to any of your games?
The last project I was involved with was RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, which has now made it onto desktop platforms as well as mobile devices. Once that was done I decided to take a back seat again and devote more time to other aspects of my life.
Transport Tycoon is game where a player has to build his/her own transport kingdom. And that's about the only rule. You start a game as a young and eager entrepreneur (yes, it's an ugly word) with a small loan. You invest your money in transportation infrastructure and services for your world map cities and their industries. The idea is to build well facilitated networks of roads, railroads, airports, and docks that will transport people and goods between cities, in return for revenue that depends on the amount of transported (delivered) goods, the travel time and the distance. As the manager of your firm, you may or may not have to face competition from other AI players, who will vie to defeat you. Sounds boring? Not at all.
I used to play this game a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean I used to live Tycoon and play life occasionally. The last time I was able to do it was the day I removed Windows 98 and installed Windows XP. Thus endeth the era of DOS and Tycoon would no longer run. Trying all sorts of Windows tweaks to somehow bring this 16-bit application to breathe in a 32-bit world did not work.
Then, one day, the Open Community decided to help me. After months of hard work, the game engine was rebuilt by a Swedish programmer Ludvig Strigeus. Instead of just making OpenTTD run only on Windows, Ludvig used the cross-platform SDL graphics and sound layer to make the game run on almost any operating system. Not only could the DOS gamers and Windows users enjoy Tycoon once again, it was made available to the Linux, Mac, and even Solaris.
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